


Listen Up (Voices Scatter)

by longwhitecoats



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Domestic, F/F, Spies & Secret Agents, Unreliable Narrator, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats
Summary: Lorraine, Delphine, and an inconspicuous apartment somewhere outside Washington, D.C.





	Listen Up (Voices Scatter)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jackalope80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackalope80/gifts).



The dawn light is a strange color to Lorraine’s eyes. Everything in Virginia is pale and thin, from the curtains on the window over the sink to the coffee—if you can call it coffee—produced by the ancient Norelco. She sips, watching Delphine try to make eggs on the electric stove. The crepes she made yesterday were surprisingly good. The fuck they had beforehand was better.

8547 Richmond Highway is about as soulless as it sounded when Lorraine first read the address. Their apartment is a ragged, already-furnished place on the first floor with a little too much evidence of former occupancy: a patched hole in the wall, stains on the carpet, a dark blot in the plasticine top of the bedstand which she suspects is a cigarette burn. There’s a bus stop outside and a strip mall across the street. The highway noise comes through the walls at all hours. Lorraine knows military housing when she sees it.

But this threadbare place has one claim on her affections that no previous hole in the wall has ever had, or ever could.

Delphine flips the eggs expertly in the pan, careful to hold it by the body of the pan (with a potholder), since the last time she performed this move, the handle came off. There’s a quiet sizzle as the omelet lands.

“Where’d you learn that?” Lorraine says. Delphine smirks and sneaks a glance at her. She plates the eggs.

“J’étais un—comment dit-on—I was a fry cook?” She overpronounces the “oo” in “cook,” a _fry kook_. Lorraine sips her coffee to hide her smile. “When I was a student.” She doesn’t say where; if it’s true, which it might not be, Lorraine suspects it wasn’t in France. “Et voilà.”

They eat mostly in silence. It’s an old spy habit. Saying nothing is always better than saying something; you never know who might be listening, or how. But on this occasion, that’s not the point.

“Hey,” Lorraine says. “You look sexy with bedhead.”

Delphine actually blushes, which is cute. She’s so _young_ , Lorraine thinks.

“And you look sexy when you’re giving head,” Delphine retorts. Her slang is flawless. She shouldn’t have stumbled over _fry cook_. Lorraine figures very few people would notice something like that.

They spend the late morning and early afternoon in the bedroom.

Domestic life comes easy to Lorraine, it turns out. She likes taking the bus, comfortably full of government drones and CIA spooks rustling their newspapers. She likes the grocery store, packed with glossy rows of canned, synthetic food. She likes coming home to Delphine and doing the crossword together, playing little cryptographic games in the margins. Everything is satisfyingly simple.

At night, she learns, her knuckles and jaw click in her sleep. She never knew that before. Delphine is the first person to sleep next to her for this long.

Delphine, for her part, seems tense. The line across her neck is still healing; she touches it unconsciously when she’s absorbed in something else. She listens to her Walkman a lot. It’s not music.

After a few weeks, Lorraine says, “I saw you reading the paper this morning.”

This is true; Delphine spent an hour with her nose so close to the newsprint that she came up with ink smudges.

“Senator McDonnell is speaking in the Congress today,” Delphine says, and Lorraine tries not to blink at the extra _the_ in front of _Congress_. It’s just noise, she reminds herself. That’s the point. It’s all noise.

Lorraine flicks ash into the kitchen ashtray. “Yeah,” she says.

Delphine waits a beat, staring out the back window. There’s frost on the ground, but a few hopeful robins are pecking at worms. Delphine watches them for a moment, and then she sighs. “He’s going to get away. They won’t indict him.”

“No reason why they should.”

“No _American_ reason, you mean.”

Lorraine just waits. This is the part of the job she found hardest when she was training; patience, quiet, letting the mark come to you. Now it’s almost second nature. She can feel the shape of the air.

She also knows that Delphine never needed training in this at all.

“He killed a spy,” Delphine says at last. “Before me. The girl I replaced.” Her mouth tightens. “We never knew if it was because she was a spy, or—” she shrugs, not finishing. Both of them have spent enough time alone with men in suits to be able to list the other possibilities.

It’s enough. Lorraine taps out her cigarette, leans across the tiny table, and enfolds Delphine in a hug. They don’t need to say any more. It’s over.

That night, they make love quietly, more gently than they ever have. Lorraine leaves a thousand kisses up and down Delphine’s body, and she doesn’t skip the tender line of her neck. Delphine whispers to her in French. They sleep very little. Lorraine spends about an hour smoking in bed while Delphine curls under her arm, both of them avoiding looking at the corners of the room.

Just after dawn, two men in black suits knock on the apartment door. When no one answers, they kick it open. They follow the muzzles of their guns from room to room. The furniture is there, but the closets are empty. The occupants have departed.

At the Toronto airport, Lorraine watches the news while Delphine sleeps on her shoulder, headphones still on her ears. Peter Jennings is describing the breaking news that a search warrant has been executed on Senator McDonnell's home. New evidence has come to light about his involvement in foreign espionage. Nothing is said about Marie-Jeanne, Delphine’s predecessor, but the grim expression on McDonnell’s face as he approaches the tide of microphones speaks volumes. They have found everything that needed finding, all the evidence Delphine and Lorraine left for them. They listened on their bugs to two women having coffee, two spies who were starting a new life in America and had no reason to lie to each other, no one to perform for.

And so they believed.

“Good afternoon passengers,” the gate agent says. “Flight 177 to Vancouver will begin boarding shortly.  Please have your boarding pass and identification ready.”

Lorraine jostles Delphine with her shoulder. “It’s time.” Delphine groans sleepily. Lorraine smiles.

“Hey.” She tucks her fingers underneath Delphine’s chin and kisses her. Even though they’re both exhausted, it’s as powerful as ever: like a radio tower or a homing beacon. It focuses Lorraine. It sets her world back in order.

Delphine grins. She picks up her backpack and takes her passport out of her coat. Lorraine follows her into the queue.

“You know,” Delphine says, “I kind of liked making breakfast.”

Lorraine takes her hand and squeezes it.

They board the plane.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Maastrictian. Title is from "Boys Wanna Be Her" by Peaches.
> 
> Thank you for being a pinch hitter, Jackalope80! <3


End file.
